


reacquaintance

by michpat6



Series: aftermath [17]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, fi is getting her rights back, imagine proofreading for typos who does thta, link has an existential crisis, rhoam slander fuck that dude, zelda just wants to use her boyfriend as a pillow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29010000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michpat6/pseuds/michpat6
Summary: They leave for their ‘vacation’ tomorrow, and Link has yet to pick up the Master Sword.
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: aftermath [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033743
Comments: 17
Kudos: 89





	reacquaintance

In Link’s opinion, the best part about their new development is the bed sharing.

At first, Link isn’t sure if Zelda wants to share the bed with him, because it seems a little presumptuous, but the first night she grabs his hand and tells him, “You are _finally_ sleeping in your bed.”

“I am?” he asks. “With you?”

“Yes,” she nods, then stops herself, letting go of his hand and nervously adding, “If-If you want to, of course, I’m not trying to-”

“No,” he says, retaking her hand. “I-I mean, _yes_ , I want to.”

That was two weeks ago. Now, they’ve gotten used to the closeness, so used to it in fact that sharing a bed is the least of their problems.

They leave for their ‘vacation’ tomorrow, and Link has yet to pick up the Master Sword.

Zelda has been patient with him, taking her time answering his questions about Before and doing her best not to force him into touching the sword that seals the darkness, but Link can tell she’s getting more and more worried the longer he refuses to acknowledge its absence from his back.

“Impa was so angry with us,” she’s finishing up a story about Before as they get ready for bed, about the time Purah convinced them to, ‘take a Divine Beast for a walk’. “She banned me from Ruta for a month.”

“She could do that?” he asks, following her upstairs.

“I was in charge of the Champions, and Impa was in charge of me,” Zelda smiles, climbing into their ( _their_ , _they_ have a bed) bed. “Mipha also had a deep respect for her. The ban was greatly enforced.”

Link climbs into the bed next to her. They need a bigger one, there’s no way the two of them can sleep crushed together like sardines forever, but it’s been nice, these past two weeks. The constant, steady touch has been welcome, and Zelda seems to thrive off of it.

(It makes sense she’d be touch starved after a hundred years of isolation. Link, who’s been alone since he opened his eyes on the Great Plateau, is happy to feed her.)

She presses close to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pillowing her head on his chest.

“This is all right?” she asks him this every night, always careful to respect their assigned boundaries.

His response is always, “Of course.”

Like clockwork, she smiles and kisses him.

(He will never tire of kissing Zelda. If he does, the Golden Goddesses have every right to smite him.)

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” he asks, absentmindedly playing with the ends of her hair. “Heading back out into the world?”

“No,” she sighs, picking at a loose thread in his Hylian tunic. “But I have to. Where do you suggest we start?”

“We’re closest to Zora’s Domain, speaking of Mipha.”

“Her father won’t be happy to see me.”

“He will. I smoothed it over with the Zora.”

“You smoothed _you_ over,” she corrects.

“Sidon’ll advocate for you.”

“Sidon?” she looks at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Mipha’s baby brother?”

“He’s not a baby anymore,” Link reminds her. “He’s, like, twelve feet tall with a great smile.”

“Oh. Right.”

She gets quiet after that, continuing to pick at the loose threads in his shirt.

(Were this two weeks ago, before their new development, he’d ask her what’s wrong. Now, he knows not to pry, to leave her to her thoughts unless she wants to talk about what bothers her. It’s the same courtesy she offers him about the Master Sword.)

Although, Link is pretty sure what the issue is.

“Are _you_ ready for tomorrow?” she changes the subject.

She’s really asking him, _Are you ready to touch the sword?_

“I will be,” he answers. _I have to be._

(It wouldn’t be good for her, for _Princess_ Zelda, if the Hero supported her without the might and the mythos of the Master Sword backing up her claim to the throne of the broken kingdom she doesn’t want.)

_Heir to a throne of nothing_ , Rhoam once spit in her face.

So what? He’s dead and she killed the Calamity. She has no responsibility to fulfill her father’s expectations of the daughter he had a hundred years ago, his assumption that she would become queen in his absence, but Zelda is good. Zelda is kind.

(If Link were in her position, he would’ve told Rhoam’s expectations to go fuck themselves the moment Calamity Ganon started writhing in his golden grasp.)

But Zelda fulfills her Rhoam-imposed duties, her Rhoam-imposed destiny, with the gracefulness of Hylia herself. Zelda is good. Zelda is kind.

(Zelda is already passed out on his chest, still catching up on a century of missed sleep.)

Link, careful not to jostle her too much and wake her, slips out of bed, settles her cheek on the pillows, tucks her back under the covers, and sneaks downstairs, eyeing where the Master Sword lies alone in the dark.

It’s silent as he pads closer, but as soon as he sits on the floor next to it it hums.

He flinches, and it stops.

“I wish you didn’t have to show me something to talk to me,” he whispers.

The Master Sword stays quiet.

“I know you think you’re helping me remember who I am, but you’re not,” he tells it. “You’re just confusing me even more. Where does the Hero stop and I begin?”

(That’s been his most pressing question this whole time: Where does he stop being _Link_ and start being…Link? Who even _is_ Link without the mantle of the Hero?)

_Just some guy with amnesia._

But he’s not. Zelda said he wasn’t.

_You being the Hero is just a perfect coincidence._

They leave tomorrow. He has to be _Link_ tomorrow.

(Honestly, being _Link_ is easier than being Link. At least _Link_ knows his role.)

He reaches out to touch the Master Sword, his fingertips hovering over the scabbard-

“Link?”

He looks up and finds Zelda sitting up in bed, her hair a tangled mess as she squints for him in the dark.

“I’m down here,” he calls, watching her head turn.

He can’t help but smile when she stumbles out of bed, grabs the Sheikah Slate off the end table, wraps herself in their blanket, and comes down the creaking stairs, joining him on the floor and cocooning them in the blanket.

The blanket is warm but Zelda is even warmer as she nudges under his arm and rests her head on his shoulder with a content sigh.

“Isn’t the bed more comfortable?” he asks.

“Naturally,” she murmurs, blinking to keep her eyes open. “But you need moral support so here I am, sitting on our awful, cold floor.”

Link laughs, feels the knot in his chest loosen. _Our._ “I’ll ask Bolson to give us a carpet when we see him in Tarrey Town.”

“What’s Tarrey Town?” she turns on the slate and curses at the brightness of the screen, grumbling, “I need to figure out a way to turn this down.”

She pulls up the map and he zooms into Akkala, showing her Tarrey Town. “One of Bolson’s employees, Hudson? I helped him build a town, then helped him get married to a Gerudo fashion designer.”

Zelda yawns. “Of course you did.”

(But Link gets Zelda like this, soft and sleepy and blunt, where _Link_ gets _Princess_ Zelda, prim and proper and a performance she puts on for the ghost of a father that never believed in her.)

“Can I ask you something?” he asks, and feels the air change. Zelda still lounges on him, her head pillowed on his shoulder as she taps through the slate, and to an outsider’s view it’s as if the question had no effect on her, but Link knows it has, knows she’s preparing herself for whatever words are about to leave his mouth.

(They always start their “I Need To Talk About Our Trauma” conversations like this. It’s become a sort of code between them.)

“About?”

“Your power.”

She takes a breath, switches from the map to the Compendium. She’s been working to fill in his blanks there, too, spending hours at a time hunched over in the grass, hunting for rare bugs. “All right.”

“Is it fading?”

(She tells him all of the time how afraid she is of Hylia’s golden glow leaving her system. He thinks it’s a lot like his fear of the Master Sword, that something so integral to who you are in the grander scheme of the universe, a piece of who you are as a _person_ , can just…stop being important. _Decide_ to stop, no less.)

“Yes,” she whispers. “It is. I can’t call upon it at will, anymore. It just happens sometimes, usually when I’m upset, but once it’s there I can control it fine.”

“Can you still feel the sword’s emotions?”

The Master Sword gently hums, a low vibration in the air. Zelda is quiet for a moment.

“Yes,” she finally answers. “But that’s fading, too.”

“What is it feeling?”

“It’s-“ she pauses, as if listening. “It’s _very_ sorry.”

(He’s sorry, too. Surely the Master Sword doesn’t want a broken Hero like him.)

It buzzes, rattling on the floor.

“Now it’s angry,” Zelda says. “Frustrated.”

“That’s my fault.”

She shuts off the slate, settling into his side with another yawn. “Don’t worry, it’s already forgiven you.”

He stares down at her tired face, at the circles beneath her eyes that are just beginning to fade. “You don’t have to sit with me down here. Go back to sleep.”

“I will,” she mumbles. “Be quiet and give me a minute.”

And he’s laughing again, pressing a stray kiss to her hair.

(Link gets to kiss her. _Link_ has to keep her alive.)

It doesn’t take long for her to nod off, her fingers twitching against his ribs, and he sits there, breathing deeply.

He has to do it. He _has_ to touch the Master Sword, he _has_ to be _Link_.

(He never wants to touch the Master Sword and be _Link_ again, but maybe he doesn’t have to be _Link_ and also be the Hero. Maybe Link is Heroic enough on his own.)

The back of his right hand-his sword hand-tingles as he wraps his left fingers around the hilt. He doesn’t feel afraid.

( _That’s_ never happened before.)

Link leans his head against Zelda’s, closes his eyes, and tries to sleep.

_-eep yet._

Link opens his eyes. Tightening his grip on the Master Sword, he looks around the dark house and checks Zelda’s sleeping face.

Was he dreaming already, or did someone just say something?

The house is silent. They’re alone.

_Never mind,_ he thinks, shaking his head and relaxing, closing his eyes again.

He’s on the brink of sleep-

_Please_.

Link jolts so hard he wakes Zelda, who picks her head up with a startled gasp.

“Sorry,” he manages, untangling himself from her and the blanket and getting to his feet, unsheathing the Master Sword and letting the blade’s blue glow illuminate the house as he transfers it to his dominant hand. “I just-It sounds like someone’s in here-“

He looks around again but finds no one.

_Master?_

He whirls, slashing the sword through empty air and slicing their table in half. Silverware crashes to the floor, plates shatter, and Zelda yelps, hiding her face from a broken shard of glass that goes flying.

“Link!” she exclaims, staring at him with wide eyes. “Are you sleepwalking?!”

“No!” he cries. “There’s a voice coming from somewhere in the house!"

“There’s no one here but us!”

_Master!_

“ _You can’t hear that_?!” he spins in a slow circle, holding the Master Sword aloft, at the ready to attack the intruder.

“Link,” Zelda says his name slowly, like he’s an animal that’s easily spooked.

“I’m not crazy, Zelda,” he insists. “There’s a _voice_ -“

The Master Sword warms in his hand, the hilt humming under his skin. He swears he feels a pleasant tingle run down his spine.

Zelda frowns. “That’s strange.”

“What?” Link asks her. “What’s strange?”

“The Master Sword,” she says. “It’s _happy_.”

“Happy?” he echoes, looking at the glowing blade. “What is it so happy about?”

_You can hear me!_

The voice is so loud it reverberates in his skull. Link curses, dropping the Master Sword and clutching his head.

“Link?” Zelda abandons the blanket on the floor and gets to her feet, touching his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t-” What did the voice just say? “‘You can hear me!’.”

“What?"

“The voice I heard,” he looks at her. “It said, ‘You can hear me!’.”

“When?”

“Just now. When I asked what the Master Sword is so happy about.”

They stare at each other.

(He’s not crazy. He’s _not_. There’s a voice in his head answering his questions that Zelda can’t hear but he’s _not crazy_ -)

Realization dawns in Zelda’s eyes.

“Goddesses,” she breathes. “The voice, Link-What did the voice sound like?”

“A woman,” he responds. “A, um, robotic woman. Like the monks in the shrines. Until it cheered, ‘You can hear me!’”

“ _Goddesses,_ ” Zelda repeats, dropping to her knees and staring down at the Master Sword. She touches the bright, blue, buzzing blade. “He can hear you, can’t he?”

“Zelda-”

She shushes him. “I’m going to ask it a question. Tell me what the voice answers.”

She can’t be serious, right? He hasn’t been able to hear the voice at all since he drew the Master Sword from its pedestal, and now she thinks he can just suddenly hear it?

(But if he can, then why now? What makes this night in Hateno Village so special?)

Zelda asks, “What did you tell me about the Shrine of Resurrection?”

The Master Sword hums-

_The Shrine of Resurrection is an ancient Sheikah medical chamber with healing properties capable of resurrecting the dead,_ The voice says. _There was a 93% chance utilizing the Shrine could heal the Hero._

Link starts, “It said-“

Zelda grins. “93% chance, right?”

“You heard it this time?”

“No!” she laughs, giddy, hopping to her feet and engulfing him in a tight hug. “But you did! You can hear the voice inside of the sword!”

“Oh,” he hugs her back, staring down at the Master Sword over her shoulder.

(This is a good thing, right?)

_Yes, Master,_ The voice-The _Master Sword_ -tells him. _There was a 78% chance you would never hear me again. Congratulations on beating the odds; It is not your first time._

Then why does he feel sick to his stomach?

**Author's Note:**

> my second semester of zoom university started yesterday and here I am, once again, feeling lost but now and then


End file.
